Many products contain wooden parts or components made with wood pieces that have been cut from boards utilizing a manually operated cut-off saw or chopsaw. For example, case goods, clocks, upholstery frames, dimension lumber parts, desks, kitchen cabinet parts and chairs are just a small example of various products that utilize wood components and pieces in which the wood pieces have been cut from boards.
Frequently it is desirable that the wood pieces be without major defects or disfiguration and be of a desired length, width and thickness.
Systems are available that either automatically (with a laser) or manually mark on the board the location of an undesirable defect. The marked boards are fed automatically through an optical sensor that scans the location of the marks and then automatically cuts the board to remove the marked defect. An example of such a system is manufactured by Dimter GMBH of West Germany and sold under the brand name "OPTIMAX."
It is very desirable to provide a less costly board cut-off saw assembly having a manually operated cut-off saw for cutting boards into smaller wooden pieces of desired lengths and for removing defective sections in a very efficient manner and to minimize the amount of waste material and improve the recovery rate of usable material from the boards.
One of the principal objects of this invention is to provide a less expensive board chopsaw assembly for a manually activated cut-off saw system to enable a cut-off saw operator to significantly increase his/her efficiency and to increase the recovery rate of useable material from the boards.
Additionally, it is desirable to provide a board cut-off saw assembly that is capable of monitoring a number of manually operated cut-off saw lines and to determine on a real time basis the amount of wood cut and the number of pieces that have length that fall within a certain length categories by measuring the pieces downstream of the manually operated cut-off saw.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a unique board cut-off saw assembly that is capable of keeping a running inventory of the wood pieces that have been cut and to be able to change the recommended settings for cutting the wood without having to shut down production and to change the settings and then restart the production.
These and other objects and advantages of this invention have become apparent upon the reading of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment.